"Why do people with Autism and our families experience a loss of power?"
Another less well-known way of understanding our human development and functioning is to look at it in terms of the biological and social memberships in which we live. To learn about these realities we must allow ourselves and each other to reflect on, and critically interpret, and historically review all human being's diverse functional and cultural situations. Here, our individual lifeworlds are viewed through how our collective group realities matter to us all. However, from the time we are born, until the day we die, we may see ourselves as "just" individuals, while others of us are seen as only group members. We may remain more or less aware of how we hold and/or have to carry, many diverse biological and social indentifications according to our racial/ethnic, geographic, economic, belief-system, gender, sexual orientation, age, and OUR ABLENESS. Together, these are all real and critical dimensions of the biosocial realities people live in around our globe, regardless of our own or anyone else's individual political perspectives. Therefore, typically more-able people without Autism are often are not socially aware of functional groups' realities that are situated far from our own. Autism is a world far and and away from that world. People with Autism may also have biological conditions that cause us to struggle to be aware of social and contextual information over our life spans. We study these spheres of Human Development and the group realities of Autism in the fields of Cultural Diversity Education and Sociological research into service providership ethics.

"Why does reading this make me want to leave this site right now?"
This section may be one you want to visit some months, or even years, after you have first learned you will be living, working, and coping with Autism long term. When we become a family member of the Autism community all our biosocial realities may become both clearer and more critical in ways that can be upsetting and confusing. Yet, the interpretations about why this is so here can increase emotional disequalibrium and cognitive dissonance about that reality. This is true even if our collective identities were, or were not, already apparent to us before. This is because, as people with Autism and our family members, we will (and any service providers who act as our allies we may) carry the realities of able-loss conditions and atypical developmental status. Such an identification automatically creates very heavy and unavoidable asymmetries in our groups' biosocial powers. Autism changes our collective situation in relation to the vast typical world of people without Autism. However, at first we may choose to approach this problem from an individualist way that is familiar to us. That is O.K. However, you may find yourself being called back to this information dimension as you struggle to survive the contextual impacts of Autism.

"Why will the information provided here help us connect with each other?"
The CULTURAL column links below provides basic information about how studies of biological groups and our social cultures relate to our understanding of Autism. It also goes on to provide reality-based interpretations of the nature of biosocial identity, status, and powers and conceptual models of language about able diversity and ableism. This leads to the construction of collective frameworks for better family and service providers relations and safer providership ethics. Together these support the need for more affordable community-based Autism program designs, and outlines the challenges of our Autism advocacy with the typical able community and our agencies with power over our resource access. In addition, we provide lists of literature sources for some of, but not all, of the more qualitative forms of sociological research into cultural relations studies that may be supportive of our families understanding our situations. In addition, we provide use-able literature sources on the past, present, and future social histories of people with Autism and our family providers and advocates.

Please understand that our web page is committed to more positive changes in biosocial groups relations between people, and not political action for or against anything or anyone. Our goal is peace-able engagement and authentic inclusive of all people, and not force-able conflict or exclusion of anyone. This information is not intended to be prescriptive in nature, but rather to be an initial biosocial worldview window to help new family and novice service providers become more aware and knowledgable about our vast able diverse universe. This can help us better connect with and care about each other across its great spectrum expanse. However, walking this path is a journey with profound developmental rewards for people with Autism, our families, and our service providers. You will get back all the parts of your humanity you never knew you lost. We invite you to follow along, and walk the path towards universal biosocial justice and mutual able allyship to find yourself as a guide-able provider.

You may send in additional questions on this topic for us to answer.